The resplendent exploits of cultural erudite David Lawler.

Tag: Twilight Zone

This is rare that we have two stone-cold classics in “The Obsolete Man” starring our old friend, Burgess Meredith, the second season finale of Twilight Zone, and then we wrap it up tonight with “Two”, the third season premiere of Twilight Zone starring Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery. I couldn’t finish this season with only the one episode, as there were 29 episodes produced, so we had an odd number and decided to kick off the third season. I’m very happy to be joined by Mark Jeacoma, who stepped in and saved my ass for the episodes, “Mr. Dingle, the Strong” and “Static” – that was the favor, and this is the job, so I assigned him two, in my opinion, gold-standard episodes of Twilight Zone.

So here we are, at the end of this season, and we start with “The Obsolete Man” written by Rod Serling, directed Elliot Silverstein, starring Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver. This is a heavy-handed episode. You have this stark, expressionist lighting scheme in, I presume, a courtroom, some court of final judgment where Burgess is being tried or sentenced to death for the crime of being “obsolete”, the definition of which is no longer in use or no longer useful. I don’t know how they come to that conclusion, other than that he leads a insular existence in a furnished room, reading books, reading the Bible, and really he doesn’t seem to be bothering anybody, right?

Apparently this is a crime in this alternate universe. This is obviously a totalitarian regime, and the uniforms resemble those worn by Nazis or other types of fascist leaderships. Visually, the palette resembles Hitler, standing at an enormous podium or lecturn, high above the masses; Fritz Weaver appears as a god-like figure to the defiant Burgess Meredith.

Next up is “Two” starring Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson, before they became famous icons, courtesy Bewitched and Death Wish (interesting mash-up: “Deathwitched”). It’s Mark’s theory that we are witness to another alternate universe. It’s my supposition that we have a Cold War allegory extended into an undetermined future. Both theories work. I love both of these episodes; both expertly well-done. “Two’s” writer/director Montgomery Pittman would make another episode, “The Grave”, in the third season (but shot for the second season) starring a Who’s Who of actors from westerns.

Don’t forget to visit Mark’s sites, VHS Rewind! with Chris Hasler and On The Odd with Alex Saltz – it’s good stuff!

Written by David Lawler
Additional Commentary by Mark Jeacoma
Original Music by Alex Saltz, APS Mastering
Introduction Music: “You’re the One That I Want” (John Farrar).
Audio Clips: “The Obsolete Man”, “Two”

“The Mind and the Matter”, written by Rod Serling and directed by Buzz Kulik is episode 63 of the American television anthology series, The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on May 12, 1961 on CBS. That’s from the Wikipedia. The subject matter is prescient; being what our society, in this modern age, has had to endure over the past 16 years, since the year 2000, but it also ushers in the era of the “Me” Generation, starting with the baby boomer generation and the self-involved qualities that some people associated with it. The baby boomers (Americans born during the 1946 to 1964 baby boom) were dubbed the “Me” generation by writer Tom Wolfe during the 1970s – again, the Wikipedia, sorry.

You have this self-involved “turd”, Archibald Beechcroft, which is such a fake-sounding name, it seems like Serling just belched out this idea onto fresh typing paper, it’s not inspiring, in any sense of the word. He works in an office situation. This is New York City, I’m assuming. He lives in a tiny apartment. He’s sick of people. He’s a misanthrope. What he wants is peace and quiet. This guy gives him a book – “The Mind and the Matter”, which is a self-help book.

In “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”, we have a couple of cops in the snowy woods, great photography here, especially if I suspect it was shot on a soundstage, it’s absolutely amazing if you take that into consideration. It would make very little sense to go on location since the majority of the action occurs in a small diner; location work being extremely expensive. The bridge is out, and the cops hear strange sounds, which they immediately surmise is some kind of an unidentified flying object passing overhead, perhaps crashing.

A bus carrying a bunch of passengers has to make an unscheduled stop, everybody files out and goes to the diner. Slow night, and you have to wonder – based on what we eventually discover – if it isn’t possible that the owner of the diner orchestrated the crash at the bridge just so he could drum up some business? Even if he didn’t, it’s still a great set-up. The episode turns into a mood piece about paranoia. John Hoyt is a businessman. The great character actor Jack Elam plays a nutty old man. I watched Cannonball Run recently for Vintage Cable Box, and I absolutely love him. He plays a drugged-up doctor that Burt Reynolds and Dom De Luise abduct so nobody will question them driving an ambulance. He shoots up Farrah Fawcett with sedatives and keeps giving everybody the finger. He’s hilarious.

So, here we are again in the Privileged Men’s Club, Masters of the Universe, sitting in nicely-appointed surroundings, upholstered armchairs, pipes and cigars, pasty-faced old money and new money hob-knobbing, like they do. They still do it, but I don’t think the clubs exist anymore, or maybe they exist as fronts for lobbying-concerns and initiatives. This is “The Silence” with Franchot Tone – he has a great voice, and Liam Sullivan, and also Dr. Smith again from Lost In Space, but this time he’s a decent guy who is just trying to put a stop to all of this nonsense. Written by Serling, based in part on a Checkov story, “The Bet” (which is actually really quite good, I recommend it for people to go out and read), directed by Boris Sagal, the episode premiered April 28th, 1961.

“Shadow Play” plays as a recurring nightmare. The story remains the same, but the characters change. An inmate (Dennis Weaver) on death-row suffers the same fate every night; trapped in a dream where he is handed a death sentence, spends his last night alive desperately trying to convince all of the people involved they are but pieces of his fate to be moved around on this horrific chessboard. Written by Charles Beaumont, and directed by John Brahm, “Shadow Play” premiered May 5, 1961.

These are two indispensable web sites, filled with voluminous references and facts about these remarkable television shows. Also, there’s lot of fan-boy stuff. When I started my podcast, I referred to his sites for information and notes.

Let’s move into our episodes. I’ve taken a cue from you and decided to break them down in a kind of thematic way. These are time-shifting episodes, of a sort. In “A Hundred Yards Over The Rim”, we have Cliff Robertson and a group of pioneers, I want to say, running wagons from Ohio to California, but his child, a young boy is sick, practically dying. Cliff crosses over a sandy hill and he goes back … to the FUTURE! Some 114 years into the future, the modern world with cars and jets, just lots of noise, like when that horrible cattle rustler wound up in the future because of the Professor’s time machine in “Execution”, except Cliff isn’t an idiot.

This is one of my favorites, because it’s a story that depends on the stupidity of it’s central characters, DeCruz and Farwell. Seriously, those guys should have their own sitcom. DeCruz is a scientist, for crying out loud. This guy is supposed to be a genius. He figured out a way to cryogenically preserve people, and I forget if there was any explanation for why he wasn’t raking in the Science cash, this would be an incredible discovery. He would have a patent and become a millionaire all on his own anyway. Maybe he appeared on the Retraction Watch, and was discredited by conservatives and the like. So Farwell hooks up with a bunch of criminals. They steal a million bucks worth of gold, and the plan is to retreat into a cave, sleep in these modified 80s glass coffee tables for a hundred years, and then they’ll wake up and everybody would’ve forgotten about the stolen gold, and they’ll walk into a clean-slate, wonderful new future with a lot of gold.

Written by David Lawler
Additional Commentary by Craig Beam
Original Music by Alex Saltz, APS Mastering

“The Prime Mover” has two accomplished science fiction writers, Charles Beaumont, working from an unpublished story by George Clayton Johnson, working together with Richard L. Bare directing. This episode premiered March 24, 1961. We have two pals, Ace and Jimbo. This guy’s name is Ace? Is that his Christian name?

What name do you give your child? (or: have you given?)Parents: Ace.What do you ask of God’s Church for Ace?Parents: Baptism … and also a crippling gambling addiction.

Charles Beaumont works with William Idelson to bring us our next episode, “Long Distance Call”, directed by Jim Shelton, premiering the following week. This was the first appearance of Billy Mumy in the Twilight Zone universe.

“Long Distance Call” is a very creepy, atmospheric episode, shot on video to reduce production costs. This is an episode that doesn’t fit well with this format. Like “Lateness of the Hour”, it comes off looking more like a soap opera than anything else.

Written by David Lawler
Additional Commentary by Nicole Phelps
Original Music by Alex Saltz, APS Mastering

I want to start off by saying I love Burgess Meredith. He’s exceptional in just about everything he ever did. If you wanted Burgess Meredith, you got Burgess Meredith as – the Penguin in Batman, as Henry Bemis, the man who breaks his glasses after a nuclear apocalypse, as the “Dingle” here, as “The Obsolete Man” at the end of this season (which we will also be reviewing), as the Devil later on … just a top-notch actor, he has a mischievious almost youthful, innocent feel about him, about his performances.

I guess this is a crazy what-if story. You have aliens observing us. Two aliens from Mars walk into a bar – sounds like a bad joke, right? You have Dingle, this guy who I guess is a pleasant mensch, a regular guy, likes to come down to the bar, have a drink and relax while he’s trying to sell vacuum cleaners. You have Don Rickles, arguing baseball with another guy. They bring in Dingle to give his two cents, but Rickles doesn’t like his opinion, and punches him – he’s such a dick, seriously. This is how you settle differences? He asked his opinion, and then he punches him when he disagrees? The only reason Rickles gets violent with him is because he’s Burgess Meredith. Now if Dingle looked like Charles Bronson – that’s another story.

“Mr Dingle, the Strong” premiered March 3rd of 1961, written by Serling, directed by John Brahm, and was followed by the episode, “Static”, written by the great Charles Beaumont, directed by Buzz Kulik, and starring Dean Jagger. You remember Dean Jagger? One of those great, old character actors. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Twelve O’Clock High (1949), Dark City, Rawhide, Warpath, The Robe, White Christmas, King Creole, The Nun’s Story, Cash McCall, Elmer Gantry, Game of Death – later in life, he appeared in Alligator, soon to be a Vintage Cable Box classic, with Robert Forster, directed by Lewis Teague, written by John Sayles. Great movie!

So Dean hates television, and his complaint is nothing new. I’ve heard so much about how television is a soul-sucker, a mind-sifter, some kind of a false god worshipped by mind-numbed zombies, but I think those arguments tend to come from an older generation raised on radio, so it’s a biased view – these older folks want to go back to a time when they were young, it’s nostalgia. I remember listening to radio. We had a show, WCBS in Philadelphia, weekends, I was 9 years old, and I listened to Radio Classics, which would broadcast “Abbott & Costello”, “Fibber McGee & Molly”, “The Shadow”, “The Whistler”, “Great Gildersleeve”, I used to love those shows. I had room in my heart for both media, television and radio. Dean is going back to a time when he was, I suppose, a young man. He’s living in – not a, I don’t want to say Old Folks Home, but he is living with a bunch of old people in a house. They love their TV. He hates it.

Written by David Lawler
Additional Commentary by Mark Jeacoma
Original Music by Alex Saltz, APS Mastering
Introduction Music: “Do You Remember Rock ‘N Roll Radio” (Ramones) by the Ramones. “Do You Remember Rock ‘N Roll Radio” (Ramones) by KISS.
Audio Clips: The Shadow, created by Walter B. Gibson, and developed for radio by David Chrisman and Bill Sweets, Fibber McGee and Molly, created by Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan, and Donald Quinn, Abbott and Costello: “Who’s on First?”, Fireside Mystery Theatre, created by Gustavo Rodriguez and Ali Silva, “Mr. Dingle, the Strong”, “Static”.

So, we have two episodes that are personal favorites of mine. I love these episodes, and yes, they do have numbers in their titles. I remember posting on the Twilight Zone Facebook group, asking how many people could name episodes with numbers in their titles. I got a lot of responses; it’s a great crowd over there, and I appreciate their input. “Twenty-Two” is based on an urban legend, essentially, the teleplay by Serling is based on a short story by E.F. Benson, which, in turn, inspired an anecdote by Bennett Cerf in a book called, Famous Ghost Stories in 1944, so we have proof right here that urban legends are not necessarily true stories, simply a kind of Mandela Effect, in which we assume legends are true because they were passed on by people, names and places change, generation after generation, and those people that started the legends were merely telling stories that were fabricated by other people.

“The Odyssey of Flight 33” almost picks up where “Twenty-Two” leaves off. We end in an airport, and we pick this one up in an airplane, getting ready to land. There were a few episodes of Twilight Zone that took place in airports and airplanes, but we’re right here in the cockpit. This episode aired February 24, 1961, written by Serling, directed by Justus Addis – we’re going London to New York, long flight over the Atlantic, but something doesn’t feel right. Instead of slowing down, the craft is gaining acceleration, getting faster.